I was not in attendance; was there any mention of the late visionary of Ave Maria - Mr. Paul Marinelli?

Please, always remeber this great man...Ave Maria owes much to all that he contributed.

From the Lords prayer? Give is this day our daily Ave Maria story, as we forgive those who don't really care.

Wonder whree all those grads will get jobs with no accredited courses ? Employers might just wonder what those degrees mean ...

A very, very, wise college prof. said....

A degree...

Is a degree....

Is a degree.....

Do you have a degree LooLooney?

Did you ask your Doctor if his degree was accredited the last time you went in for a visit?

Better yet.

Did you ask him what his G.P.A. was?

So.....

KUDOS Ave Maria Grads!

And remember.....

A degree....

Is a degree....

Is a degree........

You'll go far in life....you'll see!

Despite lame comments from LooLooney.

Congrats to the graduates.

I'll keep quiet now.

Well, LooLooney, at least one of them will be producing Mommy Minutes for a Fort Myers television station.

I doubt that her master's degree got her hired for that gig, so I'm sure the tv station doesn't care if the school is accredited.

It's all academic, anyway. George Bush, after all, is a Harvard man.

#4 ---Several

Yeee Gods...pretty scary : According to his graduation speech,TM predicts that in 2077 150,000 children and 500,000 grandchildren exponentially resulting from the 2007 graduating class.. " a grand potential ". Half a million TM fundamentalist clones ?

#8 You missed the point..It's anti Monaghan fundamental "Catholic traditionalists" --whatever they are.

The people who find Ave Maria attractive have no use for a world many of us find perfectly fine, if somewhat messy.

They get excited about things they cannot control. They depend on their version of God to IMPOSE control over what bothers them.

The rest of us figure we'll deal with things as they come up. So far, we've managed to convince most people that it’s okay to believe the earth circles the sun. We can't get some of them to see that the world is older than their reading of the Bible tells them it is.

We don't let Steve and Bruce getting married ruin our day. We don’t consider it a sin for a fifth-grader to read Harry Potter. Teletubbies don't scare us.

In that way, we're too corrupt to be around their precious spawn, which they turn out in numbers frightful to anyone who can see we're breeding far too rapidly to NOT have an impact on climate.

They want their families off behind walls. They embrace each other behind their locked gates, their cells and cubicles and information links fused as perfectly as a spider web or a honeycomb. They’re McMansioning the Israeli experience in new safe havens. We are learning to occupy the land of others and call THEM the trespassers. Our growth industry these days is walls.

If you think that makes us more like bees or ants than people, you might be seeing the end game here.

To make the playing field "level," we pile up the paperwork we need to make every call. We exist in a thicket of regulations and covenants that bind us like ivy roots. We are too many to allow self-governance.

Lawyers. Accountants. Information specialists. Human Resources. Best Practice. The recorded voice that answers the phone when you're trying to find out why insurance didn't cover your kid's broken arm.

They need order and rules, risk control. The drive takes them down the narrowest trails. The difficulty of staying on those trails renders them superior, in their minds. They keep their garages clean and organized.

They find deviants -- which is most of us -- slothful, venal, sinful, lazy, free-thinking, negative or some other brand of distasteful and scary.

The people who live in those places don't write poetry, they don't play jazz, and the only thing they paint is faux clouds on dining room ceilings.

But because don't read poetry, they don't listen to jazz, and they don't like art they can't understand, it’s no big deal. They listen to Kenny G, or buy pictures of Elvis on velvet, or hang crosses on strings of beads. They like things that don’t make them think.

These graduates don't need to fit into a "reality-based world." They're going to go forth and multiply, create the kind of communities where someone who knows better than you tells you what color you can paint your own mailbox.

They crave safety on a fundamental level. They always stay between the lines. They’ll do well in the world they’re shaping.

#10-- Ahhhmen." Not all who wander are lost."

More kudos to you , el nuestros:

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth"...JFK

elnuestros,

It seems that you couldn’t be further from the truth. If you had any idea of the general population of university students at Ave Maria, or true adherents to the Catholic faith, you would see that your claims are without base and totally ridiculous. I myself live in Ave Maria, and perhaps you would like to visit and study at the University so as to remove some of your ignorance.

There is no “version” of God. There is one, true God; and because there are so many different religions and beliefs, some (especially those who are indifferent or pagan) try to relativize who He is. It is because there are moral absolutes and one God who has revealed to man what is good for Him that good Christians must have concern for the souls of others.

As far as Catholicism is concerned, especially in the university setting, there is a faith seeking understanding. Catholics believe and seek to understand what they believe…hence the university. Thus, the earliest Western institutions of higher learning were sponsored by the Catholic Church. Perhaps you’ve heard of the papal encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Understanding). This work would enlighten you as to the way that faith and understanding complement each other; they do not exclude one another.

If you have ever been to Ave Maria, you would know that it is actually quite open compared to the nearby, many gated communities in Naples.

Should you have had the opportunity to know the wonderful students of the university, you would know that most of them are anything but squares. That’s not what it’s all about. The Catholic Church, Ave Maria, and the students therein seek to order their passions and desires so that much good can be done in the world, and so that all may enjoy beatitude hereafter. They do not deny beautiful art, music, poetry, etc. but instead see the beauty in it and seek to promote the good that the best of its kind can do.

The graduates I know will pursue the good, and seek to share it (yes…even jazz and poetry, some of the best being part of the classics read in the curriculum at Ave Maria that you must not know about). Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to enlighten you. But next time, please limit your groundless, inaccurate comments to – say – a sentence or two so that they may be more adequately be responded to.

#12 You say tomatoes...I say tomaaatoes.

It seems el nuestros has gotten Ave Maria's residents (I am one) confused with nondenominational fundamentalists.

For example: "We can't get some of them to see that the world is older than their reading of the Bible tells them it is."
> My understanding of the world's age is the same as any other educated individual's and does not contradict anything proclaimed by the New York Museum of Natural History, National Geographic, etc.

"They want their families off behind walls. They embrace each other behind their locked gates,"
> Our community, Emerson Park, has neither walls nor gates.

"The people who live in those places don't write poetry, they don't play jazz, and the only thing they paint is faux clouds on dining room ceilings.

But because don't read poetry, they don't listen to jazz, and they don't like art they can't understand, it’s no big deal."

My wife has written dozens of poems (many published) and I have written a few myself. We have both completed paintings, my wife's latest a landscape of Mt. Fuji.

I am very much engaged in the world, as a contributing editor to a national current events magazine.

My tastes in music are quite eclectic. Like most native New Jerseyans of Italian ancestry I am a big Sinatra fan, and also a jazz fan. However, my favorite music tends to be Latin, such as the Bosa Nova compositions of Brasil's Antonio Carlos Jobim. We recently had a free concert here at Ave Maria by a Cajun band from Louisiana, which residents and students alike enjoyed.

It is you, my friend, who harbor prejudices.